


The Nicest Place

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3140054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has finally managed to escape the suffocation of his life at home. But on his first night alone in his dorm room, he starts to feel a little lonely. After visiting the nicest place on the Internet, he feels a little better - and after finding himself in what might be the nicest place on campus (that is, just outside his room, hugging Dean Winchester), Cas feels very much better indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nicest Place

“Take care of yourself, Castiel. We’ll look forward to hearing all your news when you call this weekend. I know I can trust you to behave well, and I hope that you enjoy the start of your classes, and getting to know your peers. I’ll pass on your best wishes to your brothers…” Naomi talked non-stop as she picked up her handbag and made for the door. Castiel spoke little, making small affirmative noises where appropriate and frowning at the mention of his brothers. Just before she left, Naomi turned back to face her son and sighed, placing a hand on his arm.

“This will all be very different, Castiel. You’ll enjoy far more freedom than you’ve been used to having, here at college. Don’t let it go to your head.”

Castiel looked his mother in the eye for a long moment before dipping his head slightly.

“I will be careful, Mother,” he said, making sure his tone was careless enough that his mother wouldn’t see how carefully he’d chosen the words, how large a loophole they afforded him. Castiel certainly planned to be careful – careful to experience all the things that he’d been wondering about ever since he’d started visiting the local library on his own and reading books outside his mother’s prescribed reading list.

When his mother had left, though, and Castiel was standing alone in his room, he found himself feeling more alone than he’d expected. His walls were bare, the shelves filled with fresh textbooks and empty notepads, and his bedspread was plain white. There were no trinkets or photographs or odds and ends; all of Castiel’s most prized possessions were currently at home, tucked away in various hiding places to avoid being purged by Naomi. She’d packed for him, of course, selecting everything from his socks to his pens, and then she’d unpacked for him, too – socks laid out in their assigned drawer, pens arranged in a neat fan next to his new laptop on the desk.

Castiel stood at the centre of his room for a moment, frowning down at the laptop. He’d never had one of his own before; his mother had very strong views on the influence that the internet could have on children. His classmates at school had all had laptops and smartphones and iPods, of course, but he’d never managed to become close enough with any of them to convince them to let him borrow their gadgets. Castiel had been on friendly enough terms with most of his classmates, but there always seemed to be something setting him apart, some reason they wouldn’t completely accept him which he’d never been able to discern.

The library, of course, had had computers and internet services. Castiel had spent many hours sitting in front of the ancient monitors, reading article after article on one of his favourite websites – Wikipedia – or else learning as much about slang and popular culture as he could from the interestingly-titled Urban Dictionary, which he’d stumbled across whilst searching for the meaning of the phrase ‘snapchat’, which he’d often heard his fellow high-schoolers using. He’d learned a great deal about a lot of things from Urban Dictionary, and no longer blushed or felt his heart racing when he saw a swear word written down.

Today, however, in his clinically clean new college room, with the quiet left in the aftermath of his mother’s departure filling up his ears like cotton wool, Castiel didn’t feel much like learning something new. He sat down at his desk and flipped open his laptop’s lid, wondering again at how quickly and smoothly it came to life. When he’d first turned it on the day before, he’d spent a good minute or so simply staring at his desktop background, marvelling at the sharpness, the clarity of colour. He opened a new browser window and stared at the blank white page for a moment, before clicking on the search bar and steepling his fingers. He supposed that he should be looking for something productive, like what freshman mixer events were occurring over the next few days – or perhaps he should be seeking out something intelligent, to prepare for his classes. Castiel crossed his arms, rubbing his right hand up and down one of his bare biceps. Of course there were things that he  _should_ be researching. But if Castiel was honest with himself, what he really wanted right now, sitting alone in his big white room, was something… nice. Castiel very much wanted something  _nice._  He hovered his fingers over the keyboard for a moment before typing  _Something Nice_ into the search bar.

The results were disappointing: a fashion boutique and several other shopping opportunities. Castiel frowned thoughtfully for a moment. He didn’t want something nice to buy, he wanted something nice on the internet, an online space that was extremely nice. He considered this, and then modified his search.  _The Nicest Place on the Internet,_ he typed, and hit enter.

This time, the results looked far more promising. The very first site to be listed was called thenicestplaceontheinter.net; Cas clicked on it, and waited impatiently for it to load. The internet in his building was a little choppy, and for a few seconds Cas couldn’t understand what he was seeing: the website seemed to be playing some form of video, though he wasn’t entirely sure – wait, was that a shoulder? The video cut out and then resumed, smoother and clearer than before, and Castiel saw that he’d been right. A shoulder filled the screen, and then receded as the man who owned it stepped away, wearing a big smile on his face. He waved at the camera, and then disappeared, to be replaced by a young girl, who smiled and leaned in to the camera, pressing her shoulder against the lens for a moment before pulling back and waving, just as the man had. And then she vanished too, and was replaced by another girl, who smiled before leaning forwards and showing the camera her shoulder, and then when she moved away, she kissed her hands and blew on them, towards Castiel – and suddenly Castiel realised that these people were hugging the camera. It was as though they were hugging him, through the screen.

He watched the people flick past, old and young and in between, all of them smiling or waving or curling their fingers into the shape of a heart before they disappeared. After ten minutes, Castiel came back to himself, and realised that he was still staring at the screen with a little smile on his face, his cheeks slightly pink. The Nicest Place on the Internet, he thought. It seemed a very apt title for the webpage.

A knock on his door startled him out of his happy reverie. He jumped to his feet and crossed the room quickly, his heart beating a little faster than usual. Perhaps it was his mother, come back to give him something they’d accidentally left in the car. He steeled himself to be happy to see her, and opened the door.

It wasn’t his mother.

Instead, standing in the doorway with a wide, nervous smile on his face was a guy who looked about Castiel’s age, taller than he was by a scant few inches, with dark blond hair and a look in his green eyes that put flutters in Castiel’s stomach.

“Hi, there,” he said, extending a hand for Castiel to shake. “My name’s Dean, I just moved in down the hall. Thought I’d come say hi.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dean,” Castiel said, falling back on politeness whilst his brain was still jammed. Was it the unexpected social interaction that was making his thoughts freeze, or was it the way Dean’s eyes were flicking over his face, his lips turning upwards as though –  _almost_ as though he liked what he saw? But surely that was impossible. “My name is Castiel.”

“Huh, that’s unusual. Must be cool to have a name no one else has.”

Castiel tipped his head sideways to indicate ambivalence.

“It certainly sets me apart,” he said neutrally.

“Hmm. Not always a good thing,” Dean said, his eyes displaying a kind of soft understanding. Castiel felt wrong-footed. Normally, when someone managed to decipher the meaning behind one of his carefully-worded statements, they wore an expression of smiling, sharp-eyed victory, as though he were a difficult puzzle and they’d managed to solve him. Dean seemed less interested in the solving, and more interested in  _him._  But that was ridiculous.

“No,” Castiel agreed. “Sometimes it is easier to blend in.”

“It’s overhyped,” Dean assured him frankly, without self-consciousness. “It’s boring, and it makes you boring, too, if you’re not careful. Hey, is that – is that the Nicest Place on the Internet?”

Dean was peering over Castiel’s shoulder at his room, and his laptop was sitting open on his desk, with people on the screen still leaning in for a hug. Castiel turned back to Dean and lifted one shoulder awkwardly.

“Yes,” he said, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation and not finding one.

“Homesick?” Dean asked sympathetically. When Castiel didn’t answer straight away, he spoke again, for which Castiel was grateful. He didn’t want to lie to Dean, but he also didn’t feel like five minutes into a potential friendship was the best time to start talking about his difficult home life. “Everybody needs a hug now and then, man.”

“They are very beneficial,” Castiel agreed. “Hugging someone causes oxytocin and dopamine to be released in the brain, which makes you feel happy.”

“Online hugs aren’t a replacement for the real thing, though,” Dean said, still looking over Castiel’s shoulder, and speaking in an absent tone of voice. Castiel wondered if Dean were really so very abstracted. There seemed to him to be only one way that this line of conversation would lead.

“I don’t do a great deal of hugging,” he said, keeping his voice flat. He didn’t mean it as a rebuff, but Dean immediately pulled back, his nervous smile returning.

“No worries, man,” he said, his hands slightly raised in a placating gesture. “I didn’t mean to step on your space, there.”

“You didn’t,” Castiel said, frowning slightly. “I didn’t intend to suggest that I was averse to the concept of real-life hugging. It’s simply that I haven’t had the opportunity to do it very often.”

He could hear his language becoming more stilted and formal, and made an effort to relax. Dean was smiling, a warm smile that made Castiel start smiling back, before he’d even made the conscious choice to do so.

“We can fix that,” Dean said, and lifted up his arms invitingly, if a little hesitantly. “If you want.”

If someone had told Castiel ten minutes ago that he was shortly going to be offered a hug by a very good-looking guy, he would have politely inquired after their sources. If they’d gone on to tell him that he was going to accept the hug happily, he might have been tempted to nervously inquire after their sanity. But there was Dean, and here was he, and before he could let himself think twice, he lifted his own arms up slightly. Dean saw this as the invitation it was; stepping forwards, he wrapped his arms tight around Castiel’s shoulders.

It was a good five seconds before Castiel remembered that he was supposed to be hugging back. He lifted his arms slowly – careful not to make Dean think that he was trying to dislodge him, and end the hug – and slipped his arms around Dean’s waist. Was that too low? But he couldn’t adjust them now, or he’d be drawing attention to the fact that he’d thought his arms were too low. He should just act naturally. He realised that he was holding his breath, and released it. As he did so, Dean seemed to relax, too, melting into Castiel a little.

“How long do we do this before the oxytocin and the dopamine start happening?” Dean said. Castiel cleared his throat.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “However, I am feeling happier already.”

“You are?” Dean sounded genuinely surprised to have made a positive impact on his mood, and Castiel realised that Dean was perhaps not quite so confident as he would like to appear. The nervousness in his smile wasn’t there just for charm.

“Aren’t you?” Castiel responded.

“Yeah,” Dean said, after a moment. His voice was a little softer than before, a little more private. “Yeah, I am.”

Castiel breathed in slowly, drinking in the light scent of cologne and warm skin and washing powder. He tried to slow the beating of his heart, but it felt like attempting to put the brakes on a runaway train. He’d warned himself about this, of course. The possibility of a romantic relationship had certainly occurred to him in the run-up to arriving at college, and it held a certain fascination – and for that very reason, he had to be very careful not to invest himself too much in the first person who paid him a little attention. He didn’t want to embarrass himself – not that it was likely that he’d get the chance. It was hardly probable that Dean felt any kind of physical or romantic attraction to him, after all. He was just being unworldly, and ridiculous, and hopeful –

“Say, Castiel,” said Dean, and Castiel only realised that they’d moved closer, their chests pressed together, when he felt the grumble of Dean’s words move through his body like a little series of earthquakes, tiny tremors sent through his ribs and up to his heart. “This is a bit – but, uh. D’you – d’you think you’d like to go – go on a – a date? With me?”

Castiel counted to three, slowly, his lips pressed tight together; he felt as though if he started smiling, he might never stop.

“Yes, Dean,” he said, feeling his own words travelling back the way Dean’s had come, through their close chests. “I would like that very much.”

“Oh, boy. I mean, uh, that’s cool. Yeah, that’s great, I mean, awesome. That’s awesome.”

And it was, Castiel thought, as he stood in the corridor in the warm arms of a man, with the cold emptiness of his room behind him. It was very, very awesome.


End file.
